A lot or all of the pictures are of people taking ukemi, which is the way in which people receive a technique by using a motion that allows them to quickly and smoothly recover from said technique. It is a training tool. No one I know of that studies Aikido actually expects the person receiving a technique in a "real life" encounter to be thrown through the air in a graceful breakfall. In "real life" you'd hear a crack and generally see something very quick and messy. But people seem to 'know' this, in my experience, when they're training, or at least at the dojo I study at.

A lot of the criticism floating around is from folks that don't have experience either in Aikido or ukemi, so you see pictures and videos but totally out of context because you don't know what the 'point' of the technique in question is, the nature of the training environment, or how someone could think that what they were doing is effective.

That said, I myself have been guilty of over-committed attacks (and under-committed and utterly incompetent attacks), and everything in-between. Aikido is principle based, IMO, so its ability to work effectively seems to vary from practitioner to practitioner. Some folks seem like they will never be in a place to effectively dissuade a real encounter with violence (I'm probably in this camp), some are perfectly capable of very quickly manipulating my body in various ways I'd rather it not be manipulated regardless of my level of resistence or attempt to get my free arm or foot out to strike or grab them.

But it's not MMA. It's purist TMA, where I study, and from within the subculture of Aikido it would be seen as more-or-less 'hard' styled. There's no talk of Ki or anything, and though there's a learning curve where you're just learning the principles and going easy, resistence is eventually encouraged until you're supposed to strike with speed/force and really jam or stop whatever technique is being applied (if you can). The mechanics of Aikido work in my limited experience (1.5 years) with no mention of Ki or anything anyone here would lose respect for saying. What I've found is that Aikido is what you do when an attack is initiated and about to strike or grab, and Judo is what happens if you've dealt with the attack too late. Hopefully that makes some level of sense. It's about focusing on learning timing and spacing directly instead of as a side-effect.

But hey, that's me. I'm not an expert and I'm never going to be a star member of Bullshido -- I'm a bunny, as you might say... I do actually try to live by many of the ideas of this MA I study, which would make some folks here retch, and you won't find me in competitions, and I train in TMA because I enjoy it, period. I'll also never be a subscriber of The Martialist, if that helps!

1. No one cares about what you just said.

2. You study a gendai budy not a traditional martial art. It's only 60 years old.

3. March is Aikido sucks month. If you don't like people making fun of Aikido go back to Aikiweb.